RWBYCOM
by fanoren
Summary: The world is filled with strange locations where people just mysteriously disapear. The bermuda triangle would be a prime example of such a place. But where do they go? Teams RWBY and JNPR stumble into one of these locations, and suddenly find themselves fighting someone else's war, in the slim hope that victory could lead them home.
1. quick note and prolouge

Hello everyone! To those of you who are fans of my story "Worth Remembering" I've got some bad news. Writer's block has finally caught up with me. I've got all the important parts of the next chapter all planned out, but I'm having trouble connecting the dots. I talked to a friend of mine about it and he suggested writing something else for a while and come back to it later. And so here we are.

This is something I've had running around in my head for the past two weeks or so. A RWBY crossover with XCOM: Enemy Within. (I own neither of these BTW). The reason I'm not publishing this in the actual Crossover section is because it's mostly going to focus on the RWBY characters, and who would actively search for this xover anyway?

To those who don't know about XCOM, (If you do, skip this paragraph) it's a strategy game by the people who made the civilization games, and in 2012, it was declared strategy game of the year. The basic idea is that you are the commander of XCOM, a top-secret military project funded by several nations around the world, your task? defeat an alien invasion or humanity will be enslaved or killed. No pressure. Your soldiers are affected by permadeath, so if they get shot in battle, they can die from it and can't rejoin the fight later on, and if too many nations decide to stop funding XCOM, you lose.

Now, to make things a bit more interesting for you readers, you can send me a PM with a character profile, and I might use them. However, please note that chances are, they will die, or might not be used at all. (The game likes to frustrate me by giving me too many snipers, most of whom never see combat.)

And finally, as some of you may have guessed, this will all be based entirely on how my game goes. When a character dies, it's probably not because I wanted them to, but that's how the game went. So please don't be offended if your favorite character dies. I did what I could to keep them alive. So, let's just get things rolling, shall we?

* * *

Newly demoted Central officer Bradford gazed at the pictures of four of the bravest men and women he'd ever known. His first operation as commander of XCOM, Operation Devil's moon, saw these four soldiers landing in Germany in response to reports of an attack by unknown forces. After a brief firefight, three XCOM operatives and three small aliens were dead. However, the last XCOM survivor, Recruit Victor Garza, was wracked with PTSD and taken off active duty. He ate his gun last night. Making it a total of four XCOM operatives killed. after only one mission.

Now here their pictures hung, in what the rest of their operatives had begun referring to as "Memorial wall".

The council of nations that supported the XCOM project were concerned about this loss, and almost killed the program in it's infancy. But upon reviewing the footage of the battle, decided that Bradford's poor leadership was responsible for the catastrophe. Rather than allow himself to be discouraged by this, Bradford was determined to stay on with the project and do everything he could to help win this war. He owed it to those who paid the ultimate price for his failure.

"Central officer Bradford, please report to the situation room." A robotic voice called over the base's loudspeakers. The officer sighed. He knew what was going on. The council had finally decided who should take his place as commander. Turning his back to the memorial wall, he marched out of the barracks, and into the mission control room.

The barracks had all the appearance and atmosphere of a bar and gym rolled into one, but the mission control room was where you got to see XCOM's home base in all it's glory. The room was dominated by a giant holographic globe. The nations currently apart of the council were highlighted in a light blue. Right smack dab in the center of Germany, a green pentagon with an X through it showed the location of the XCOM base. Surrounding this globe was a small army of men and women working at their computers. All of them hunting for an anomaly that could be a UFO, or the start of an alien raid on a major city.

Bradford walked past them as he made his way into the situation room. It was a large room just above the barracks with three walls and a large screen that doubled as the fourth wall. The screen projected a map of the world, and highlighted each of the sixteen funding nations. At the top of the screen sat eight dots waiting to be filled. The engineers had dubbed this "The doom tracker". Whenever a nation left the council, one of those dots would fill up. Once eight nations left, the council would deem the XCOM project to be a failure, cut off the remaning funding, and return to trying to find their own individual ways of dealing with the aliens.

"Hello, Central Officer." An impossibly deep voice greeted him. Te screen flickered for a second, before revealing the council's spokesperson. His face was shrouded in shadows, preventing anyone from knowing what he looked like. But he carried an undeniable authority in his voice. The voice of a council of sixteen nations. Most of the soldiers who'd seen him commonly referred to him as "Optimus Prime in a suit" because of his voice.

"Central Officer Bradford, Reporting for duty." He saluted.

"We assume you know why you have been called here." Optimus inquired.

"Yes sir." Was Bradford's reply. "You called me here to reveal the next commander of the XCOM project."

"Correct. We have sent you the dossier on the man we have selected as your new commander. We expect you to retrieve him, and have him ready to assume command within the week. Remember, we will be watching." And with the spokesperson's usual farewell, the screen returned to its normal display.

The tablet laying on the conference table behind him beeped. Letting XCOM's new second-in-command know that he'd received a message. Picking up the device, Bradford entered in the password, and a young man's file popped up.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me." Bradford cused under his breath. Was this some kind of sick joke the council was playing on him? Giving an ultra-secret paramilitary force to this guy? What were they thinking?

His own feeling's aside, Bradford had his orders, and he had to carry them out.

* * *

Before I go, I just want to point out one last thing. This story is an experiment in character consistency and dialogue. Both are issues that I have when writing. If your character or any of the RWBY cast starts acting out of character, call me on it. Thank you, Fanoren out.


	2. Commander Rudloff, reporting in

Former Colonel Kai Rudloff of the US army sat alone in a bar in New York City. His face laying flat against the bar, and a half finished drink in his hand. Despite it being past closing time, the bartender didn't make any effort to wake the apparently sleeping man. On the bartender's arm, he proudly displayed a tattoo of the Army Rangers, and he walked on a prosthetic leg.

"Hit me." The colonel mumbled, and the barkeep did just that. Punching him in the head.

"OW!" Kai shouted, shooting up in his seat, and clutching his now throbbing head. "What the hell was that for?!"

"You told me to, sir." The barkeep answered and went back to cleaning the tables.

"Wha? But I..." The colonel looked confused for a minute before noticing the drink he'd left on the table. He downed what was left of it in one go and passed out, falling on the floor. The barkeep turned towards the sound of his former commanding officer.

"Sweet dreams, Red." He said sadly. Kai had hit a new low since he was forced out of the millitary. It wasn't much of a surprise that he'd turned to drinking. The former ranger went back to work, but then there came a knock on the door. "We're closed!" The soldier yelled. "Go home ya drunk bastard."

"The name's Caden Walsh. I'm looking for a Colonel Kai Rudloff." Kai looked up from his spot down on the ground.

"Whaddaya want?" He groaned out before his head fell back to the ground. His old subbordinate rushed to the door as fast as his fake leg allowed him. When he opened the door, he found a well built man standing in the doorway. His brown hair was cut short, millitary regulation short, and his face was one of determination. He was a fellow soldier.

"Why are you looking for the Colonel?" The retired Ranger asked.

"Does that mean you know where he is?"

"Depends on why you're looking for him."

"That's classified." The old soldier looked back at the colonel and decided to let the man in. "This the colonel?" He asked, looking at the man passed out on the floor. "I thought he'd be taller."

"You don't have to be tall to be a hero." The barkeep said. "And make no mistake, that man is a real hero."

"Yeah, he's got that whole "bodily fluids everywhere" kind of heroic vibe to him." He bent down and grabbed the colonel by his coat, lifting him up, a wallet fell out of the pocket. Grabbing the wallet with his free hand, Walsh was surprised when it opened up. "Please tell me this guy isn't the Colonel I'm looking for, and his real name is Jack Mitchelson?" The Wounded ranger slapped Kai in the face.

"Didn't I tell you not to steal from my customers?!" He yelled at his bewildered and groggy ex CO.

"They won't notice until their next round of drinks." He said with a drunk smile.

"HEY!" Someone outside shouted. Suddenly, an enraged man, probably Jack Mitchelson, burst through the door to the bar. "Who stole my wallet!" He shouted.

"Good drinker, that one." He broke out of Walsh's grip and stumbled up to the mad drunk guy, holding up the wallet. "You wouldn't happen to be missin this, would ya?" The drunk's fist flew at the former Colonel, who ducked at the last minute, and delivered a knockout blow to Jack's jaw. Jack fell backwards, knocked out from the force of the blow. He collapsed uncerimoniously at the feet of the veteran.

"What the-" Walsh wondered aloud before a red-faced Kai turned around.

"Whoo! Nothing like a good fight when you're hammered. Wouldn't you agree Jimmy?" Jimmy, the bartender, glared at the former Colonel. And in turn, Kai simply ignored him. "Now, I know Jim, and I don't think I'm hammered enough to hallucinate, so who are you, big guy?"

"And now's the time of night where I wonder why I call him a hero." Jim muttered to himself before going to clean up another mess.

"I'm Recruit Caden Walsh. Are you Colonel Kai Rudloff?" Rudloff nodded. "I was sent here to give you this." He removed a file from inside his jacket and handed it over to the drunk warrior. The Colonel opened it up and flipped through a few pages. He settled on one page and stared at it for a while... before throwing up all over it. He dropped the file and rushed for the bathroom, vomiting up his dinner and drinks along the way.

"Not the first time he's thrown up on top secret information." Jim said to a concerned Walsh.

"And the council's decided to put my life, and those of my friends into this guy's hands?" The XCOM operative thought. "I hope they know what they're doing, or we're all screwed."

* * *

A few hours later, XCOM's skyranger troop carrier decended into a hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere, which closed up after the plane entered it. Underneath the ground was the XCOM hangar. The centerpiece was a large circular landing pad, which was where the Skyranger landed. Above, and around this landing pad were four simmilar pads, each designed to extend over the main landing pad, and launch highly advanced fighter planes to intercept UFOs. Only two interceptors were stationed here.

Central Officer Bradford looked on with a mix of emotions as the skyranger landed. He was hurt that the council had seen fit to replace him, worried about how well XCOM would function under their new commander, terrified at the thought of what would happen if humanity lost this war, and confused as to why a female soldier with the Russian flag stitched to her uniform was running up to the plane with a can of spray paint.

Recruit Alexandra Ivanova rushed up to her unfinished work the moment the Skyranger touched the ground. It was a painting of a giant head with grey skin, and big black eyes. It had no mouth, or nose, or any other facial feature. It was the head of a Sectoid, the classification that the research team had given the tiny aliens that had all but wiped out Delta team. She quickly painted a red circle around the head and made a line through it before running back to the rest of her team before the ramp of the transport plane dropped.

"Did you really need to finish it that badly?" Recruit Emily Mcintyre, who wore the flag of Scotland proudly on her back, asked her squadmate as she returned.

"You kidding me? I've been working on that since I was transfered here! It's been nagging at me to finish it for days!"

"Quiet, The Commander's on deck." The unofficial leader of the team, Freida Vogel, a strict German woman, snapped. The trio saluted as Recruit Walsh and Commander Rudloff stepped out of the plane. Well, Walsh stepped out, Rudloff stumbled out clutching his pounding head. But when he saw the entire force of XCOM standing at attention for him, he smiled.

"It's good to be back in a fight." He said. "At ease people." The staff dropped their salute and Bradford came to greet his new commander.

"Did Walsh inform you as to what's going on?" He asked.

"I kinda threw up on the top secret file I was supposed to read." He explained. Bradford already didn't look very happy. "So, the big guy filled me in as best he could. So, I'm supposed to be the new commander for this unit fighting off an alien invasion?"

"That's the basics of it. Follow me, I'll be giving you a proper tour of the base." Amazingly, it seemed the aliens knew exactly when the new commander arrived, because as soon as Bradford said this, an alarm rang out across the base.

"The aliens are launching an attack!" Someone shouted over the loudspeaker. "All personel report to the mission control room!"

"I like this place." Rudloff said with a smile. "Not even here for five minutes and I already see some action."

"That's a negative commander." Bradford cut in. "We haven't briefed you on the situation, we can't afford to send troops out when you don't know what we're up against."

"Then give me a rundown while the troops are en route." The new commander ordered. His voice was suddenly filled with a sense of authority that left no room for debate. He turned to Walsh. "Get the rest of your team. You're going in." Walsh looked as though he'd just been read his own death warrant. To his credit, the soldier still carried out his orders. No matter how suicidal they may have seemed. Rudloff looked back to Bradford. "There someplace where you can tell me what we're up against in private?" There was a determined glow in the man's eyes. And now Bradford knew why the council had determined that this war hero who'd been kicked out of the army for his drinking problems had been selected to lead XCOM.

"The situation room is right this way, commander." And the two men left the hangar. Walsh apporached Vogel, Ivanova, and mcintyre.

"We're about to see action." He told the three women. Mcintyre and Ivanova shared scared glances, and Vogel nodded.

"Get your gear together." She ordered. "Be ready to leave in five minutes."

* * *

Current active XCOM operative Roster:

Emily Mcintyre

Alexandra Ivanova

Caden Walsh

Freida Vogel

Remember, if you want to throw a character of your own into the meat grinder that is XCOM, just send me a PM with a general description of the character.

* * *

A/N: Okay, this one was a bitch. It was originally supposed to be much longer, including the mission and the commander's heroic speech. However, technical difficulties arose far too often for my liking and I decided to call an end to the chapter here. Next chapter will include the above as well as introducing the RWBY characters and answering a lot of the questions you may have.


	3. Operation Frozen Thunder

I'll be the first one to admit that the fight here was written pretty lazily (It was the first thing I wrote), and just as is tradition with me and this site, I made a few promises that I couldn't keep. Next chapter WILL have RWBY characters in it though.

* * *

"Tell me we've got satelite coverage of the area." Commander Rudloff said as he burst out of the situation room almost two hours after he arrived at the base. Bradford followed him into the room.

"Coming up on screen, sir." One of the technicians reported. The giant globe hologram in the center of the room vanished, replaced with an L shaped office building. Floor to ceiling windows covered most of one section of the building.

"Switch to thermal imaging." The new commander ordered as if he'd made the order one hundred times before. Four orange shapes appeared in the building.

"We've got four contacts in the Combat Zone."

"How far out is the strike team?"

"ETA is five minutes, sir!"

"Good, Bradford, brief the team on the situation."

"Yes, sir."

"And could someone get me a beer?"

"No, sir!" Came the unanimous reply from everyone in the room.

"Worth a try. Okay, let's win this and bring everyone home. Begin operation Frozen Thunder!"

* * *

Operation Frozen thunder was go. Walsh, Ivanova, Mcintyre, and Vogel all ran down the ramp of the skyranger, into a single city block in downtown Novgorod.

"Allrighty people, let's see what these alien bastards can do." The new commander said from the Mission Control room back at base. "Walsh, Vogel, move in to flush the enemy out of the building. Mcintyre, Ivanova, cover them then take positions to eliminate targets as they appear.

"Yes sir!" The four soldiers answered.

The soldiers were silent as they moved through a parking lot to get to the door on one end of the L. Vogel and Walsh rushed to either side of the door, while Mcintyre and Ivanova covered them. Walsh quietly opened the door and was greeted by the sight of a room of cubicles. Evidently, not everyone had gone home for the night, as several bodies covered head to toe in the strange green material the aliens wrapped up their abductees lay on the ground.

"Bad night to work late." Walsh commented as he stepped over one of them, followed by Vogel. The others held their ground, keeping their eyes peeled for enemy forces. As walsh took a defensive position behind a desk, he saw a flash of grey with bright orange. "Contact! Sectoids!" He shouted, firing a burst of rounds at the small grey aliens. A flash of yellow blood indicated at least one round hit it's mark, but the alien scurried off down to the other side of the building.

"We got two of them!" Mcintyre called back as two sectoids, one of them bleeding heavily ran past a large floor to ceiling window. They were small, maybe they'd reach four feet tall standing on their hind legs. Most of their bodies shared simmilariteies with a young child, except for the lightish grey skin, the giant head that was easily twenty to thirty percent of their body, and a bright orange blot in the center of their chests. Clamped down on one of the creature's wrist was a glowing green weapon. A plasma pistol that could easily kill one of the XCOM soldiers in a single shot. They'd all seen the footage of Operation Devil's Moon. They knew how dangerous those superheated blasts of plasma could be.

The two soldiers opened fire at the scurrying creatures. One had it's body cut in half at the waist from the force of the barrage, and the other lost half of it's head and chest. Both fell to the ground, dead.

"Good job, Strike team. Two more and we'll break the current record." Rudloff said with a smile on his face. A smile that was mirrored by many of the men and women around him. They could smell victory.

"More contacts!" Ivanova shouted. Indeed, two more sectoids came bursting out of a room just a little deeper in the building to see what was going on. Ivanova and Mcintyre fired off a few rounds, but nothing connected, the aliens scurried off to find cover away from the window and the troops firing at them. They took shelter in the room connecting the two parts of the building.

"Damn it." Mcintyre swore. "Shots failed to connect."

"Mcintyre, Ivanova, hold your position. Walsh and Vogel, Smoke 'em out."

"Will do, boss." Walsh said. Eager to get his first kill. Behind him, the silent Vogel also wore an excited smile. The two of them moved up, at least one of the sectoids was in the next room. And rather than waiting for them to come to it, it came running out of the room, directly into their view. Both raised their weapons to fire, but a sudden burst of fire shattered a nearby window, and killed the sectoid with a trio of holes in it's head.

"Think you're ever going to get a kill, Walsh?" Ivanova taunted over the radio. "Not when I'm around, you're not." Dissapointed, Walsh lowered his weapon, but brought it back up again and fired off a burst when the other sectoid popped up on the other side of a nearby window. Despite his training, Walsh missed every shot. The Sectoid dashed behind the cover of a large flower pot and hunkered down just in time to avoid shots from both Ivanova and Mcintyre. The two women kept up a sustained barage of suppresive fire, keeping the alien pinned behind the pot.

Clink. Went the sound of a grenade's pin being pulled.

"I always hated flowers." Vogel stated simply as she chucked a grenade out the window, and it landed right next to the tiny alien.

BOOM! Went both the flower pot and dangerous alien.

"That's quite an arm." Walsh noted. Vogel silently reloaded her rifle and moved forward. But as she took cover by another door, she smiled playfully at him.

"Didn't want to be the one with no kills." Walsh took cover on the other side.

"There's bond to be more of those freaks around here, right?" He said. "I'll have a few kills of my own by the end of the mission. Just wait and see."

As it turns out, there were no other aliens in the area. After spending the next ten minutes sweeping the block and those around it, the strike team found no trace of any remaining enemies. As was procedure, they gathered up the bodies and what could be salvaged from the alien weapons and loaded them up on the skyranger.

"So, Walsh, can you regale us with the tales of the many kills you said you were going to get in this mission?" Vogel teased. "Or did we steal them all?" A dejected Walsh sighed.

"It's gonna be a long flight home."

* * *

Rudloff smiled while the rest of the men and women in the room were busy celebrating their victory. It was the first time they had won a certain victory against the invaders, a foe most of them had thought of as invincible. This battle proved that they could be beaten. It gave them hope that they could beat the odds and win this war. But their new commander knew that victory would only come at a steep cost in lives. His forces were simply lucky that the aliens had been caught off guard and were dispatched before they could fire off a single shot.

But for now, he'd let them celebrate even though his every instinct told him it was too early for such things. Or maybe it was because he had a bad hangover and all this cheering wasn't helping? He mentally wrote it off as a mix of both. Not even waiting for the strike team to return, the young man with the world on his shoulders stumbled out of the Mission control room, and into his private room next door to the situation room. He passed out onto his bed. Wondering with his last concious thought whether or not he was ready for this.

But in the end, we are never truly ready for what life throws at us. As he would lean a few weeks later after a mission to Alaska.

* * *

A/N: You may not be seeing an update for this story for a while. Currently, I'm trying to get used to XCOM's classic difficulty. This chapter was written based on a fight in normal difficulty. And XCOM is notorious for it's difficulty curves. You can play through the entire game on normal without losing a single soldier, but when you play on classic nobody survives more than 5 missions. There are 4 difficulties to this game, Easy, Normal, Classic, and Impossible. The game developers made Impossible difficulty so hard that they claimed it was only possible to beat it in theory. (And then a youtuber doing a lets play, who only half knew what he was doing beat Impossible difficulty WITHOUT LOSING A SINGLE SOLDIER. HOW?!)

Anyway, That was my ramble for today. My point is that XCOM's war is supposed to be a difficult and dangerous place for your soldiers. But with my average of six deaths each playthrough on Normal, I just wouldn't be doing it justice. Victory is supposed to be acheived through heartbreak and sacrifice, six graves just won't cut it. So while this mission was played on normal, the rest of it will be played on classic. However, I want to be sure that I'll win the game so you guys can have a proper ending. So, I'm going to be doing a few playthroughs on classic until I get to that point.

Also, I received a review recently that absolutely confused me. A guest reviewer asked me if I could have the RWBY cast clean the entire base before they go off on a combat mission. Could whoever submitted it please let me know why you want that?

Before I go, I would like to submit a challenge to my fellow RWBY writers. I recently got back into an old hobby of mine: Warhammer 40000. To sum up the game, it's a mix of Fantasy and Sci-Fi in a dark setting where the lesser of all the evils in the galaxy are space Nazis. I'd like to see a few RWBY crossover fics with 40k. I'd write them myself but I've got two stories I'm currently working on and one that I plan to go back to once I finish up one of these two. So, I leave it to you guys to write them if you want.

Or maybe someone could just write a Jesse James Dawson fic so I could read my fill of hillbilly samurai while I wait for the next book.


	4. unexpected UFO

Hey guys, Fanoren here. So, I've been trying to get a handle on XCOM's classic difficulty, and it's a bit… difficult.

"That's an understatement." said the ghosts of the hundred or so XCOM Operatives who died on classic since I last undated.

Yeah, it's hard. And for that reason, I'll be sticking to normal difficulty for this fic.

So, one of you guys asked to see a link to that you tuber who beat impossible difficulty with a perfect run. I can't actually post a link here, but his Youtube username's Zemalf. And to that guest reviewer who sent me the longest review I've gotten on this site: Thank you. A lot of what you were talking about had already been planned, but you gave me a few ideas to work with and I appreciate that. Also, as to the RWBY characters dieting in a memorable/ furthering the cause way, nope. Soldiers die at any moment for sometimes completely pointless reasons. (Just ask the guys I sent on terror missions the past few weeks) Any character can and will likely die off without any warning.

So, remember, if you want to throw in a soldier into the XCOM meat grinder, send me A PM and we'll discuss things further.

And now, without further ado, I present the next chapter of RWBYCOM!

* * *

March 16th, two weeks after Commander Rudloff took over as leader of XCOM.

XCOM had engaged in two operations since Frozen Thunder, and no XCOM soldiers died in either mission. The only casualty was Vogel, who was shot in the leg by a sectoid in the previous mission two days ago. She was currently recovering from her injury and was scheduled to return to duty in three days. Walsh had finally gotten a kill in the previous mission, though Mcintyre currently held the record of six confirmed kills. Something Ivanova was not happy with.

Another thing the Russian woman was not happy with was the assignment of what the council refered to as "Classes". Based on the performances the troops had shown in the field, the council would decide which of the four classes to assign to the soldier. Not even Commander Rudloff had a say in it, which pissed him off considerably.

Mcintyre had been assigned the role of the heavy, which meant that she now carried around an LMG and a rocket launcher. And the commander had to agree she was good at her role of blowing up stuff that got in her way. Though this talent also made her unpopular with the research team, since she tended to blow up the alien technology they were hoping to research alongside the aliens carrying said technology.

It had been decided that Vogel would be a sniper, which was the role she had actually been hoping for. Though ever since her designation, she'd been hit with a string of bad luck that culminated in her leg wound.

But what Ivanova was really mad about was the fact that she was assigned as support, the medic. While Walsh was given a shotgun and declared the "Assault" Which was the role she had wanted all along. Though she had to admit, Walsh was good in this role. His first kill had been the sectoid that shot Vogel. Drawing the alien's attention and fire while Vogel limped back to better cover. The alien soon learned that the former member of the French Foreign Legion was a lot faster and more agile than he appeared. Especially when Walsh got so close he pressed the barrel of his shotgun to the sectoid's head before pulling the trigger.

But so far, she had to admit that she liked being a part of what the rest of the recruits had begun to refer to as "the Ace squad". They were all quickly acknowleged as the best soldiers in the unit, and every night at the bar, they were the center of attention as they told their only slightly exaggerated stories of their missions while people bought them drinks. It was a good life so far. But like the rest of the ace squad, she knew it wasn't going to last. Something was coming that none of them were expecting. Something big.

* * *

Commander Rudloff stepped off the elevator, and into XCOM's research lab.

"Doctor Valhen?" He said. He was greeted by a woman in her late twenties. Doctor Valhen, head scientist for XCOM's R&D department.

"Hello, Commander." She said, her voice switching randomly between a French and German accent that confused most people who encountered her for the first time. Is there anything I can help you with?"

"I was hoping to talk to you about the alien weaponry." He stated. "Have you made any sense out of those fragments the team recovered from the field?"

"Yes, the alien's weapons are able to interface with the alien's neurological-"

"Sorry doctor, but I don't have time to listen to you rant about their technology, keep it short."

"Well, in that case," The doctor turned back to the tablet in her hands, sounding a little sad. It was a well known fact in the organization that Vahlen was obsessed with the alien technology, and loved to talk in depth about it with anyone who'd listen. "As I'm sure you noticed, the alien weapons self-destruct when their operator is killed."

"Yes, I've noticed." It was one of the many things he found frustrating since he first showed up. At the top of that list was how hard it was to get a drink since everyone had been ordered not to give him any alchohol, it didn't stop him, just made it a lot harder. But this was a close second.

"Well," The doctor was about to continue when an alarm rang out across the base.

"Commander, get to the Mission Control room. Our satelites have picked up a UFO in Alaska!" Came the voice of Central officer Bradford over the intercom.

"Sorry doctor, but I gotta go."

* * *

"What's the situation?" Rudloff demanded as he entered the Mission Control room.

"We've got a UFO over Alaska." Bradford repeated. "But this one's different than the one we shot down the other day."

"How so?"

"According to our readings, it's a lot bigger, and a lot slower."

"How big?"

"Bigger than a whale."

"Okay, how slow?"

"My grandfather's biplane could fly right past it."

"Do we have a satelite covering it?"

"Recon Satelite 54 is moving into position as we speak. Should be getting video footage of it any minute now."

"Good. I want it onscreen as soon as our satelite makes contact."

"Yes, sir." There was a moment of silence while they waited for the satelite, which was broken by the commander.

"Your grandfather has a biplane?"

"Yeah, he-"

"Sir! Satelite has made contact with the UFO!" One of the engineers manning the satelite array called out.

"Onscreen! Now!" The hologlobe flickered away, replaced by a screen showing a mountainous region of Alsakan tundra. In the center of the screen was a large flying ship that lumbered lazily forwards. But something was wrong. This didn't look like a ship used by the invaders.

"Are we sure that's a UFO?" Rudloff asked.

"It doesn't match anything the nations of the council use."

"Well, commander? Should we send intercepters to bring it down?" Rudloff just stared at the strange ship.

"Something doesn't feel right." He said. At that moment, Doctor Vahlen rushed into the room, her eyes locked on her tablet.

"Commander! This is... Remarkable!" She hurried to his side. However, the commander was to absorbed in the image presented before him to pay attention to Doctor Vahlen. "We're picking unprecidented levels of energy coming from that location! If we could find out what's generating it..."

"Doctor, what do you mean 'From that location'?" Bradford asked. "Do you mean the ship?" The doctor shook her head violently.

"That entire region! Energy readings from everything within a two-mile radius is off the charts!"

"Magnify!" Rudloff suddenly shouted. The image on the screen zoomed in on the ship, confirming the commander's suspicion. "That thing's losing altitude!" Indeed, the front of the ship was slowing pitching forwards and gliding towards the ground. It wasn't long before the ship slammed into the ground and came skidding to a halt. Chunks of metal were torn off and thrown into the distance. "Bradford, send in the ace team. I want that ship secured."

"Sir, Vogel is still in the infirmary."

"Then sent a rookie in to take her place."

"Yes sir."

Less than ten minutes later, the Skyranger was on its way to the crash site. Ivanova, Walsh, Mcintyre, and recruit Riku Mutsuda were on their way to uncover the mystery behind this strange ship.

* * *

Was planning on this being longer, but oh well. Next chapter we get to see how one of the Beacon airships suddenly popped up in Alaska.


End file.
